


Five Kisses From English

by jedishampoo



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Explicit Language, M/M, UKUS, ukxus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-11 14:32:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12937299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedishampoo/pseuds/jedishampoo
Summary: Undercover agent AU. Five times English kissed Hero (and when Arthur finally kisses Alfred).





	1. Kiss One

MARCH  
  
“’Hero’ is a bloody silly name,” was the first thing English ever said to him.  
  
Al’s immediate instinct was to reply, _Nice to meet you too, asshole_ , but he didn’t.  Good first impressions and all!  In retrospect maybe he should have, because as they shook hands, what he did say was, “Ha ha.  That’s not the greeting script.”  
  
“Then you shouldn’t fucking mention it, should you,” English said.  He yanked his hand out of Al’s, then plopped into a chair and picked up the wine menu.  He stuck his nose into it as if he couldn’t stand the sight of Al already.  
  
Al sighed.  Ten seconds into his first meeting with his first real partner, and already he’d screwed up.  
  
This was the definitely the correct guy, at least.  Al had seen the file: codename English, thirty-one, blond, British national.  He’d showed up right on time – walked in the door right on the millisecond, actually, and Al knew it because they all wore standard-issue smart watches.  English was sporting a slate-grey, well-tailored suit, much like the one Al had on. Also like Al, he was packing multiple pieces, but not visibly so that anyone here might notice.  
  
_Choose somewhere public_ , they’d said.  _Get used to operating unnoticed in the open.  Initiate first contact with your partner via text, and send a script via other means_.  
  
Al had done that.  Chosen this wine bar in the old brewery district, the kind of place that was popular with people from boomers to millennials.  The kind of place that was tucked away among other shops and restaurants, so there was lots of foot traffic and various alleys and means of escape if necessary.  Chosen four-oh-three on a Saturday, a time when people would be starting to trickle out for the evening, but not so many people yet that there wouldn’t be a quiet corner to sit in.  Al took a seat across from English and clicked his fingernail against the glass of pinot grigio he’d already ordered.  
  
“Maybe you didn’t get my card?” he said.  The one with the greeting script, he meant.  
  
English sighed but didn’t look up from his menu.  “I got it.  That was a foolish approach.  Do you know how many people handle a piece of mail?”  
  
“Oh,” Al said.  So: screwup number two.  Or one, maybe, since it had technically come first.   
  
What English had been supposed to say was, “so what’s good here?”  He hadn’t.  And he didn’t when he spoke again, either.  
  
“Are you even old enough to drink?  You look like you’re nineteen, or something equally ridiculous.  You look younger than your photograph,” English said, not even looking at him.  
  
“Pictures are lies.  I was expecting someone taller, honestly,” Al riposted.  And that made English glance up.   
  
“Don’t be a saucy cunt with me.  I can nix this here and now,” he said in a low voice, eyes narrowed under his heavy blond eyebrows.  He had pretty green eyes, though.  At least, they looked green in the sunlight filtering through the bar’s tall, tinted windows.  
  
Al fought the desire to toss his wine into them.  “Listen, can we start over?  Hi there!  I’m Al Jones, nice to meetcha!  I can recommend the pinot, but if you like reds, the Stag’s Leap cabernet is awesome.”  
  
“Don’t be silly.  And did you just give me your real name?”  
  
Oops, he had.  Screwup number three?  Rule Twenty.  Al was ex-military but not covert: he’d been _Al_ , or _Jones_ , or _Private Alfred Jones_ , for years.  And for this, he hadn’t even gotten regular FBI training, just a week in classes and a list of Rules you kept in your head.  This secret-agenty stuff was just plain weird.  Weren’t they all on the same side?  The Brits in Afghanistan had been friendly as shit, if prone to joshing him around.  
  
So he just shrugged.  “Tryin’ to look casual.  Smile a little!  We’ll look like we’re on a Match-Dot-Com date or something.”  
  
“A date,” English said, cocking an eyebrow like he was trying to decide if he should be offended or not.  Then he straightened and smiled.  It wasn’t a big smile, and it looked a little forced, but it was still kind of cute.  _Uh-oh._   “That, I must say, is not a terrible idea.  Very innocuous.”  
  
Al hid his sigh of relief.  He hoped.  “So we’ll go with that?  It could be, like, our Thing.  All our--” he didn’t say _missions_ —“meetings could be dates.”  
  
“We’ll see.”  English scowled.  The waitress came; Al noticed that English ordered the suggested Stag’s Leap.  Then he changed.  He tilted his head and fixed Al with an all-over look, a look that suddenly said _I’m checking you out and I like what I see_ , but still managed to be flirtatiously shy.  “So what do you do?”  
  
He was good.  Supposed to be among the best, Ops and his file had said.  Al wanted to be good, too.  He grinned and ruffled his hair.  
  
“Well, I got out of the Army a few months back.  Been doing some temp work until I get something permanent.  IT assignments, mostly.”  
  
“Ah.  Fascinating.”  
  
“Not really.  So what do you do to kill a weekday?”  
  
“I work a government job.  The nine-to-nine, you know.”  
  
Their shifts were thirty-six hours.  A day and a half on, in the nearly constant company of one’s partner, alternated with two days on call.  Supposedly.  Al had heard it was really a twenty-four-seven thing.  And that you burned out after a few years, but were well-placed to start high in another branch of enforcement.  
  
“Oh, cool,” Al said.  “Sounds steady.  Is it boring?”  
  
“Oh, it has its not-dull moments.”  
  
“Awesome.”  Al grinned again and slouched and sipped his pinot.  Don’t overdo it on booze, they’d said – Rule Fifteen -- and he wouldn’t.  Still, he was becoming relaxed enough to let a little of his old accent slip.  “So how do y’all like Texas?”  
  
“Oh, it’s a trifle humid.  But pleasantly warm.  I moved here with my ex and af—after, I sort of stayed.  Tied down, but not really.”  
  
English was slouching a mite, too, and did a sheepish little shrug-thing when he said “ex.”  His control of body language was a sight to behold.  And was that a blush on his pale cheeks?  Wow.  Al could learn from him for sure.  
  
“Oh, yuck, exes!” Al said.  He tried a dismissive wave but tried too hard and sent a spoon flying off the table.  It clanged against the window glass and then clattered to the floor.  And hell if that didn’t attract a few glances, _crap!_  
  
“Oops,” English said.  
  
“Ha ha!  Sorry, I’m kind of a klutz.”  
  
“That’s all right.  It’s rather darling, to tell the truth.”  
  
Al managed not to say “really?” in a pleased voice.  The waitress showed up just then and further helped end the awkward moment by bringing English’s red.  She bent over to dig Al’s spoon out from under his chair.  
  
“Sorry about that,” Al told her.  “First dates make me so danged jittery!”  
  
She offered him a consoling smile.  English’s flush deepened.  Still, a hard warning glint passed through his gaze – the slightest narrowing of his green eyes before he laughed.  Al would have to practice that look in the mirror.  
  
“I think they make us all somewhat nervous,” English said.  With a proper dismissive wave that didn’t upset the silverware.  
  
“Guess I have powerful bad feelings about exes?” Al offered.  
  
“Fortunately, Franc-Jacques and I parted without discord.  So there’s no, er, what do you call it?  Drama.”  
  
“Lucky,” Al said.  
  
Code name _Frog_ was not English’s ex-boyfriend, but had been his partner for years.  With all the new agents coming into the fold, they’d been separated so they could partner with and mentor the newbies.  Like Al.  His friend Elizabeta had been paired up with Frog, though he supposed he should think of her as _Sword_ now.  
  
“Not that I have any real trouble with exes,” Al continued.  “I mean, I haven’t really been seeing anyone since I got my discharge.”  
  
“Lucky,” English parroted.  He sipped the cabernet.  “You’re right.  This is very good.”  
  
“Ain’t it?  They make a cab here that’s not bad, but I like ‘em a little drier.”  
  
“As do I.”  
  
Al didn’t say _lucky_ again.  They chatted for a few minutes while they drank their wine, slowly, not overdoing it.  What are your hobbies?  Which were video games and playing ball for Al-- didn’t matter what kind, base, basket, foot, Al liked them all—and knitting and reading biographies for English.  Knitting, dude, that was so domestically cute.  
  
They laughed and mock-flirted.  What languages do you speak?  Al was fluent in English and Spanish, and had picked up a little Farsi overseas.  English spoke English, of course, and Italian, and Russian, Mandarin and Cantonese, French, and several others: Al lost track somewhere in the Slavic/Persian list.  Where have you lived?  Al had been born here and trained in Tennessee, and had been stationed in Rhode Island for a bit, and of course, Afghanistan.  UK and Chicago and here for English.  
  
All the latter stuff matched the file on English that Al had seen.  He began to relax a little more, at what seemed a candid, standard, “getting to know each other” first contact.  Al needed the connection, too, dammit.  If he was going to spend half the next few years with this fella, relying on him for information and leadership and backup both, and for the preservation of his very life, he wanted to feel comfortable with him.  
  
At one point, he asked, in a low voice, “So what’s your name?”  
  
There went English’s eyebrow again.  “Are you kidding me.”  
  
Al’s hand pulled a Texas-click-point-pow. “Dude.  You ask questions, but I’m not always hearing the question marks.”  
  
“That’s called dryness.  I thought you liked it?”  And hell if he didn’t run his toe up the inside of Al’s pants leg, from his ankle to his knee.  
  
The jolt of sparky-heat in Al’s belly was immediate and alarming.  He would admit it: he jumped in his chair like a dork.  Felt the blush burn up and over his glasses, from his chin to his forehead to his ears.  That had been a socked toe.  The guy’s file had said “Sexuality: Celibate.”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
English merely looked … was satisfied the word?  Smug?  He finished his wine, then dug a couple twenties out of his pocket and laid them on the table.  Always pay cash, they’d said.  Rule Twelve.  
  
“I’ll get this one,” English said, standing.  He jerked a little as he, presumably, slid his shoe back on. “So.  Shall we go?”  
  
“What the heck?” Al laughed to cover his rube-moment.  “Thought this was a Match-Dot-Com date, not a Tinder date.  Ha ha.”  
  
“Does it matter?  
  
“Uh.  Nope.”  
  
_Oh, shit_ , Al thought.  He wanted to like his partner.  He didn’t want to think his partner was hot, or want to bang him, jeeze.  What kind of trouble could that lead to?  Sure, he’d said _gay_ on his application, but had sworn that the gender of his partner wouldn’t make a difference to his job performance.  
  
Playacting, that was okay, though.  And that’s what English was doing, Al reminded himself.  He got up and shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and followed English’s saunter out the door, nothin’ to see here, just a couple of guys fake-hooking up, ha ha.  
  
_Shit shit shit._  
  
Outside the door, English took a few steps around a corner to an un-windowed spot with cover provided by a potted palm.  Al followed, not sure what else to do.  
  
And holy fuck, if English didn’t reach up and grab Al’s face, and then lay a full, smacking kiss onto his lips.  It was closed-mouth, but still Al twitched all over at the taste of wine on English’s breath.  
  
“Du-- dude.  What was that for?” Al asked when English stepped back.  
  
“I’m kissing your arse goodbye.  You won’t last long.  See you Monday at oh-nine-hundred,” English said, and without another word, continued his previous cool saunter.  Away from Al and into the pre-dusk crowd.  
  
_Shit._  
  



	2. Kiss Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oopsie, Al.

MAY  
  
Missions came down directly via coded text to their smart watches: this one had come while they’d been watching a movie at the Alamo Sixteen-Plex of all places.  They’d been sitting there, eating popcorn and watching some romcom they could both agree on (it’s a date, Al had joked, the businessman and his townie boyfriend, except in this case Al was the businessman in his suit; English only said _ha ha_ ), when the blinky-blinky started in.   
  
Twenty-four-seven was right; Al hardly ever seemed to get a break from sitting around in cars or skulking down alleys with English in the humid Texas nights.  Sometimes they saw action, but mostly it was the blinky-blinky, and then sitting, or skulking, or sleeping.  
  
After a couple of months and quite a few thirty-six-hour dates later, things had sort of settled down between him and English.  If by settled down, one meant “yup, they were on the same side,” at least.  
  
Learning on the job was tough and seemed to consist mostly of Al screwing up while English berated him for being a naïve fool.  Al sometimes wondered why Gamma Task had even accepted him: he’d had very little experience with covert ops in the service, and when his former CO had recommended upon top-secret pain of top-secret death that he apply, Al had taken a day or two to decide.  He hadn’t even been able to ask any of his friends or family for advice.  He hadn’t even known about Elizabeta— _Sword_ —until he’d seen her in the first day of class.  
  
Al had passed physicals and firearms with ease, which was not a surprise.  What had been a surprise was that they’d decided his personality was a fit for their top-secret FBI offshoot.  He had the required lack of fear, proven by his record in combat, they said, though of course he’d just been doing his job as a soldier.  But one of the nondescript and number-named desk-bound agents had told him that he also had loyalty, virtue and a particular brand of artlessness.   
  
Al wasn’t sure what those things meant to Gamma Task.  He knew what they meant to him, because it drove him nuts that he didn’t know English’s real name.  Seriously, watch a dude knit for hours on end behind the driver’s seat of a white Caddy, and you still had to call him by a codename?  
  
That’s what they were supposed to do, English reminded him constantly.  Rule Twenty protected the identities and families of those who might be found out, and sometimes the bad guys came to know you.  As long as they knew only your codename, your life couldn’t be used against you.  
  
Al was learning, because English did teach.  He didn’t flirt any more, even fake-flirting, but that didn’t stop Al from still finding him kind of hot.   
  
“Follow me to the intersection of Second and Branch, and then head west to Flores, then north as far as George, and back east to Second.  Meet me on the corner there,” English instructed from a few steps ahead. He was looking particularly hot tonight in a pair of jeans and a Spurs tee, both tight over his wiry frame.  His feet sported a youthful pair of low-top Chucks.  
  
“West on Branch, north on Flores, East on George,” Al repeated, phone plastered to his ear.  For show: English spoke to him through his earpiece.  “Got it.”  
  
“Walk casually.  I know you can manage that.”  
  
“Sure thing, pardner,” Al said.  English often told him he was too casual.  Too artless.  It had served Al okay so far; the bad guys never seemed to suspect him, with his fresh-faced, jock-y blond looks.  
  
These bad guys would be extra-twitchy, though: word from Ops was that this was a routine drug gang, but possibly led by an un-routine cadre of professionals with ties to organized recruitment cells.  These guys would be on their guard.  
  
“And do try to read the situation.  Think first, then act.”  
  
“Yep.”  English’s Personal Rule Number One.  Added to the list already in Al’s head.  
  
So Al walked casually, hands hanging free, see, nothing in them, and kept a surreptitious eye on his surroundings.  It was a Tuesday night, so there weren’t a lot of people out.  The ones who were out maybe deserved his oh-so-casual attention.  
  
The suspected hidey-hole was an apartment a little ways off Second and George.  It was a data draw, a power draw, that might be housing a mega-server.  The regular FBI covered shit that was going down or might soon be going down: Gamma was front-line, investigated shit that had the slightest chance of maybe, possibly, going down in the future.  Sometimes they were wrong, oops, sorry to intrude, was trying to find a buddy who used to live here, ha hah.  But often they were right.  
  
The liquor store in Fort Worth last week had been one of his and English’s successes.  The criminal owners had thought that locating in the snooty part of town and dealing in expensive imported booze was a good enough cover for the amount of money the Gamma hack-jockeys had seen dribbling through the data lines.  And yet Al had spotted the gun oil stains on the owner’s shirt as he sold them a two-hundred-dollar bottle of Scotch.  The regular FBI and their dogs had moved within hours to confirm the rest: gun parts and ammunition.  In amounts illegal even for Texas.  
  
“Hero” was lucky, and English was good: part of Al’s luck was in being paired with him.  So were Frog and Sword, who were also in on this mission.  They were having a fake lovers’ argument outside a bar a couple blocks away, Al’s earpiece told him.  
  
So Al and English split at the stop sign, and Al went up Branch, just a guy coming home from a movie date.  He paused at Flores: maybe he was a little drunk, coming home at midnight on a school night?  He put a little more stumble in his step.   
  
Halfway down George a guy was leaning against a building, smoking.  He was a D64 — white guy about six feet four, taller than Al — and he was wearing an Astros cap, a suit jacket, and a — a scarf?  Weird.  Suspicious, for a Texas night in May.  The guy eyeballed Al through a cloud of smoke as he passed.  
  
“Howdy, man,” Al slurred as he walked.  The guy grunted.  
  
Then there was the sound of pounding footsteps, and turned to see the scarf-guy running full-bore down a side street.  Running away.  That was even more suspicious.   
  
So Al followed, also at a sprint.  It would have been nice to also be wearing sneakers instead of wingtips, but Al was a good runner regardless.  
  
English must have seen his dot peel off the path on his GPS.  “What the fuck are you doing?” his prissy voice hissed over Al’s earpiece.  
  
“Dee-six-four high-tailing it down Green — I’m following,” Al said into his shoulder, only a little breathless.  
  
“Don’t do it alone!  I thought we discussed—goddammit,” English bitched.  “Frog, Sword, get your asses over to my position.”  
  
“Ten-four, mon ami,” Al heard Frog say.  
  
Al wasn’t just a good runner, he was a very good runner, and soon he was right up on the guy’s back.  He grabbed the trailing end of the scarf and yanked the guy to a stop, and then football-tackled him to the ground.  The suspect was stronger than hell and did a fucking fast-ass pushup, even with Al right on top of him, knocking Al’s glasses to the trash-strewn street and almost sending him to join ‘em.  To top that off, there were the _crack-cracks_ of rapid gunfire, at least five or six rounds, and the _ping-chip-peww_ of a couple shots that ricocheted off the brick wall somewhere by Al’s head.  
  
“Got Dee-Sixty-Four in a lock, but I’m under outside fire,” Al hissed into his shoulder.  
  
“I’m coming,” English said, sounding as breathless as Al.  “Use him for cover, fucking— Sword, call the regulars in.”  
  
That meant the police or the FBI, whoever was fastest.  Most of their own little group would scamper off into the unknown before the official-officials arrived, but Al would have to hold the guy and make the explanations.  Usually English did that for him, but doing it himself would be good experience, Al thought, as he struggled to keep the guy on the ground.  
  
“Ouch, fuck,” Al shouted, as the guy whipped back an elbow and connected just under Al’s ribs, sending sharp, hot pain spiking through his entire side.   
  
“Vee-visect concrete,” Al’s captive growled.  Something long-barreled and black poked out of his scarf and over his shoulder, right into Al’s face.  “Vee okra hanky.”  
  
“Fucking hell,” said English’s voice, both over the earpiece and in person.  He was there, behind them, and Al heard another gunshot, and suddenly his face was splattered with something hot and wet.  The guy beneath him went from fighting-mad and armed to deader than shit, his brains blown out.   
  
“What the hell! He could’ve—” Al began, but was cut off by English’s hands under his armpits.  With a strength a shorter-than-expected body had proven time and again, Al was lifted off the dead guy to his feet and then dragged, stumbling, away.  
  
“That is—was— Ivan the Rotten.  Good riddance, but we’re outnumbered and getting the fuck out of here, come _on_!”  English yelled as they ran.  They were followed by more _tat-tat-tats_ of gunfire.  
  
“What was he saying?”  Al’s side still hurt from where Rotten Ivan had elbowed him.  
  
“Russian.  Telling us that we are outnumbered and soon to die, come on, run, you idiot!”  
  
“I am running,” Al protested.  But he was out of breath, and the stitch in his side was becoming unbearable, huh, weird, and he was covered in blood.  He was dripping onto Flores Street.  It was hot, and he hurt.  
  
“What is wrong with you?  Usually you’re trying to race me,” English said.  He was slowing, looking Al up and down.  “Are you _bleeding?_ ”  
  
“Only Johnny Rotten’s brains.  Haha,” Al giggled.   
  
English’s eyes widened.  He halted.  He reached out and wiped some of the goop off Al’s face, then started patting him on both sides, from the top down.  Man, it was a hazy night, Al thought.  Pretty.  God bless humidity, for real.  
  
“Ow!” he cried when English pounded him under the ribs, on the side where he’d been nailed.   
  
“Oh, hell,” English breathed, in a voice Al hadn’t heard from him before.  “Come on, come on, move.  Let’s get inside somewhere.”  
  
“Gotta run,” Al said, and took a step or two, until his knee gave out and he stumbled face forward onto English.  
  
“No running for the mo— moment,” English said.  He dragged Al—Al wondered why he couldn’t run, why English had to drag him, goddamn his side hurt—into a parking garage.  “There— there— hold onto this railing, stay standing, there’s a good lad.”  
  
Al held onto the railing, since English was being so nice.  It sure was dim in the garage; he couldn’t see a thing, could only feel English behind him, wiry hands dismantling his belt and yanking his shirt out of his pants.  
  
“Are you hittin’ on me again?” Al slurred.  He didn’t have to slur, he really wasn’t drunk, but damn, did his head feel fuzzy.  
  
“No!  I’m searching you for — oh, great clomping Christ, that is a lot of blood.”  
  
“From Johnny, tole ya. ‘M fine.”  
  
“You are not fine.  You are shot,” English said.  He sounded a little shaky but his fingers were firm, if gentle, as they traced a pattern along Al’s hot, aching side.  
  
“Shot?  Ow!”  
  
English sighed, long and loud.  “It looks like a scratch, or it passed through — I don’t believe you have a bullet in your kidney — but it’s bleeding profusely.  Frog, new directions: get your car, drive to my position.  We’re in a car park on Flores.”  
  
“On my way,” Frog said over the earpieces.  
  
English set back to work on Al’s clothing, dropping his trousers to his knees and pulling hard at his shirt—tearing it, it seemed.   
  
“Why’re you ripping my nice shirt?” Al mumbled.  His ass was cold without his pants on it.  He was in a parking garage, bullet-scratched and covered in blood and freezing, and his ass was hanging out for the world to see.  But then, it was only English … “Franc-Jacques ain’t ‘is real name, izzit?”  
  
“No,” English said.  There was the sound of ripping cloth.  
  
“Dunno why you won’t tell me yers…”  
  
“You know why.  Now stay still, good, good.  Let me b-bandage this.  It’ll be all right, I—I promise.”  
  
English was stuttering.  Al wondered how badly he’d been shot, anyway.  Couldn’t be too bad; he was starting to feel warm again.  Warm and fuzzy and tired…  
  
“No, no, stay up, upright.  Stand, now.  Listen to me.  That man is—was—‘Ivan The’ Rotten.  A known malicious foreign agent.  Johnny Rotten, now, was the singer of the Sex Pistols.”  
  
“Sex shooter,” Al murmured, then laughed.  Was that the Sex Pistols?  Or Prince, maybe.  
  
English’s cool hands were pressing at the bottom of Al’s back, just at the top of his ass-crack.  They felt strong, sure.  Felt good.  Too bad everything was so fuzzy, or Al’d appreciate it more.  
  
“No, stand, there you go.  Hang on to the rail.”  English’s voice was soothing, gentle.  “Talk, quietly.  T-tell me something.  What music is it you listen to on your headphones?  Country and western, I suppose.”  
  
That got Al’s attention.  “Hay-ell no.  I only listen to country when I hafta.  Texas, yannow.  I—uh.”  
  
“Yes?” English prompted.  Al felt English’s cool hand on his chest, holding him up while he tightened something around Al’s waist.  His belt, maybe?  
  
“Top 40’s good.  Uh.  You’ll laugh.  Got a soft spot for 70s California rock.  Eagles, ‘Merica… M’mom listened to it.  When she was alive.”  
  
“Oh?”  English grunted as he yanked something tighter.  “Pretend it’s a date.  Tell me more.”  
  
“Thirdysixhour date.  Dates with your Kindle and your knittin’.”  The lights in the parking garage had dimmed even more.  Huh.  
  
“No!  Don’t go to—oh, thank God.”  English sounded happy about something.  He hugged Al from behind and kissed him on the cheek.  Second time English had kissed him.  “Help me get him into the car.”  
  
“Aww.  Has your darling idiot been hurt?”  
  
“Yes.”  English sounded tired.  But at least he cared, Al thought, before he just went to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole scene is the reason I wrote the fic, as it was inspired by something I saw on vacation. ;) Oh, "Sex Shooter" is by Apollonia 6. Thanks for reading - all comments, concrit, welcome.


	3. Kiss Three (plus bonus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kissy kissy kiss. Oh, and English drunk.

OCTOBER  
  
After seven months on the job, Al’s sleep schedule seemed permanently wrecked.  Thus he was already awake in the middle of the night, on an off day, when he got a call from Ops.  It was a real, live, phone call on his cell, not a text on his watch.  Caller ID told him it was Alamo Cleaning Services.  
  
It was really Agent 53.  “Hero.  We’ve been trying to reach English, but he’s not answering any of our contacts.”  
  
“Well, it’s his vacay, after all,” Al said.  He was standing in his kitchen, in his undies, getting some OJ out of the fridge.  “Are you calling us in?  I didn’t get a blinky-text.”  
  
“No, we just wanted to contact English about something.  And we can’t.”  
  
“You think it’s something bad?”  English was conscientious as all hell, so it was strange that he wasn’t answering Gamma Task calls.  Even on vacation.  At one a.m.  
  
“No.  Likely he’s ignoring us.”  Fifty-three sighed.  “Listen.  Sometimes he does this.  We have his location on GPS.  We just want you to go check on him.”  
  
“Okayyy,” Al said.  If English was ignoring ‘em, then that meant he didn’t want to talk to ‘em.  Which meant there was a good chance he wouldn’t want to see Al, either.  Much as Al hated to admit that to himself.  
  
Fifty-three heard the hesitation in his voice.  “We can call Frog—Frog knows him pretty well, too—”  
  
“Nope, I’ll do it!  Happy to,” Al interrupted.   
  
English was _his_ partner.  Besides, Al still owed him one.  After the Ivan incident, Al had been taken, half-conscious, to a military hospital, where they’d patched him up.  It had taken a week to get back on the job, but thanks to English and his quickie field-bandage, he’d been alive to do it.  
  
They’d been commended for nailing Rotten (Ivan The), but the rest of the criminal gang had scarpered before the FBI could move in.  All they’d found in the apartment had been some bad data cables and good pot.  
  
Regardless, Al owed the debt.  And more.  He tossed on some jeans and a pullover hoodie and drove out to find his pardner.  He followed the GPS blip to just south of downtown, and laughed as he parked in the street.  His pardner was in a bar. A real dive, too.   
  
Inside the place was half-deserted.  A few guys and gals in cowboy hats were still around, playing pool.  At the back, a few more guys in cowboy hats were standing on a little stage and packing up their instruments, done for the night.  Garth Brooks was playing on the jukebox.   
  
Al spotted English’s blond head, hunched over one end of the wooden bar.  
  
“So it’s you who likes country music,” Al said as he approached from behind.  
  
English whipped around — unsteadily.  When he confirmed who was hailing him, he rolled his eyes, long and slow and sarcastic, then turned back to hover over his beer.  
  
“Have they sent you to fetch me.”  
  
“Eeeyyyup,” Al drawled.  
  
“Fucking.  Can’t I have a single day to m’self?  Get pissed like any normal man wants to, now and then?  Did I sign that right away?  Forever?”  
  
“Eeeyyup,” Al said again.  Who’d’ve thought that English got burned out on secret agent shit?  Of course, word was that Gamma agents only lasted four or five years.  English was working on seven.  Plus there’d been the stuff that had gone down last month … Al had wondered if English’s behavior then had been a blip, or a trend.  It was starting to look like the latter.   
  
On top of that, he wasn’t wearing his watch.  The one he was never supposed to remove.  Unwritten Rule Eleven.  They were all chipped, though, which was how they’d located him.  
  
_Oh, I got friends in lowwww places_ , Garth sang.   
  
Al could say that ever since his injury, they’d gotten along better.  It had become clear that English held some sort of mentor/mentee affection for him, no matter how he pretended otherwise.  _Darling idiot._  And it had likewise become clear to Al that he had a ginormous hero-crush on English.  Hero with a hero-crush: wasn’t that just ironic?  
  
He had to hide it, of course.  Letting English know could only embarrass both of them.  And maybe lose Al his job.  He took a seat next to his pardner, leaned an elbow on the bar, and waited to be acknowledged again.  
  
After a few moments, English turned to look.  He was slack-jawed and unshaven, and he had little bits of rock salt from his Mexican-dressed beer stuck to one corner of his lips.  Thin lips.  Expressive lips.  Al resisted the desire to brush the salt away.  Kiss it away, maybe.   
  
_Nope nope nope.  Career, remember?_   Al hadn’t given up on having a life for four or five years just to blow it by being an infatuated dork.  
  
It was just, he’d never seen English drunk before.  Never thought to, either.  English was wearing black jeans and a dark grey dress shirt that was way too nice for this place.  It wasn’t tucked, though, but loose, and it was half-unbuttoned.  Al desperately tried not to ogle the vee of bare chest revealed by the open shirt.  And hoped that English’s sharp awareness wouldn’t catch him trying not to do it.  
  
Luckily, or unluckily, depending on how one looked at it, English was well on the way to being royally smashed, and his gaze was half-lidded and unfocused.  It was another look Al had never seen on or expected from the legendary agent English.   
  
English merely snorted at Al’s steady regard.  “You can stay, if you promise to tell ‘em to fuck off,” he slurred.  
  
“Don’t think I have that kind of seniority, yet.”  
  
“No, s’pose not,” English sighed.   He sipped his beer and licked his own salt away, pity.  “But you can stay anyway.”  
  
“Thanks, man.”  Al grinned.  
  
Wonder of wonders, English grinned blearily back.  Al’s belly went all fluttery.  “Want a drink?”  
  
_Eeeyupp._   “Nope.  One of us needs to stay sober on your vacation.”  
  
“Huh.  Still not positive you’re old enough, in any case.”  
  
“Ha ha.”  That was an old joke between them already.  “I’m the adult right now.”  
  
“Smartass cunt,” English said, but with a turning-up of his lips that softened the insult.  “Then I’ll have another.”  
  
He waved the bartender over with a sloppy gesture and ordered another Modelo.  Al got a Pepsi.  They didn’t speak for a couple minutes or so, long enough for English to start on his next beer.  
  
Silences between them weren’t really uncomfortable.  Yeah, they were getting along better, or maybe they’d just gotten to know each other’s ways better?  English called him an idiot more and more infrequently.  He’d lent Al a couple of pretty good founding father biographies.  Al found out that English liked Fleetwood Mac, so he played them in the car sometimes, out loud.  And didn’t tell English that he snored when Al was on watch.  Mostly because he thought it was charming as hell.  
  
The “stuff” had happened a couple weeks ago, when they’d had to pull a seventy-two hour shift together, driving all the way up around Oklahoma City to skulk around an oil refinery that had been seeing an upsurge of data and dollars.  
  
The two of them had uncovered a separatist militia.  They hadn’t engaged, just called the particulars in to the FBI, but they’d been seen by enough of the gun-nuts that they’d had to drive the long way home to shake off any possible pursuers.  The long way had taken them to Amarillo and Tucumcari for an overnight at a hotel – Al could count on one hand the number of hotel rooms they’d had to share in his seven months on the job – and then through the middle of nowhere to Lubbock before heading home.  
  
Where they’d found out that Silver and Regis had gone missing.  English had pitched a fit at headquarters, bitching that he’d never get the smell of oil, cow and mesa out of his clothes, not while he was alive, and had promptly requested a week’s vacation in October.  Ops had granted it, even though it would leave them short.   
  
Al had been meant to go out at dawn with Frog and Sword; instead, here he was again, with English.  Where he belonged, honestly.  _Listen. Sometimes he does this._ Though it wouldn’t be fair to English to be saddled with Al forever.  
  
Eventually Al ventured, “So, what’s up?  You okay?”  
  
English snorted.  “Yeah.  ‘M okay.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
Al swiveled and leaned back against the bar, both to watch their backs and give English his space.  In the morning, he maybe wouldn’t appreciate having been seen like this.  There were things Al could say, but English had told him more than once that he spoke without thinking first.  Al figured he’d just make himself present and available: that’s what you did, for your main dude.  See, he was learning!  
  
English focused on his beer.  He made short work of it and ordered another.  Last call, y’know.  This late, the jukebox was locked and loaded on strict honky-tonk; _Country music singers have always been a real close family_ , Hank began singing.   
  
English was singing, too, but not with Hank.   
  
“My soul is locked and frozen,” he mumble-hummed.  
  
It sounded like a line from a poem.  A depressing poem.  Sad, to think of English feeling like that.  Al rustled up some gumption to speak.   
  
“You know.  Uh.  Maybe it’s time for you to get out.  Get your cushy job in regulars,” he suggested, wincing pre-emptively at the expected explosion.  
  
Which didn’t come.  “You wan’ me gone?  Wan’ my job, eh?” English said, almost too quietly to hear.  
  
“Shoot, no!” Al exclaimed, though it wasn’t a bad question in the circumstances.  “You’re my partner.  I’m used to you, dude.  It’s just …”  
  
“Hopeless fantasies making fools of me,” English said, and drank some more.  
  
“What?”   
  
English snorted.  “Think yer ready?  Ready to take an idiot of yer own?”  
  
“Uh.  Probably not,” Al admitted.  But ready enough to team up with someone.  His heart squeezed at the thought of going out and skulking around with anyone but English.  
  
“You, on th’other hand, should get out now.  Before ye end up dead. Or like me.”  
  
It wasn’t like English hadn’t hinted at that before.  But this seemed somehow different?  “Now, why do you say that?”  
  
They were interrupted by the sudden rumble and blinky-blink of Al’s watch.  It was their keepers.  Al glanced guiltily over; English’s eyebrow merely crawled up a notch.  
  
“Answer th’bastards, then,” he said.  
  
So Al did, tapping in his reply.   
  
_Hero: I’m here._  
  
_53: You found English._  
  
_Hero: Yes.  He’s okay._  
  
_53: Good.  Take care of him, will you?_  
  
That was a strange request.  Al stared at his watch for a moment, then plinked his reply.  There was only one possible answer, after all.  For lots of reasons.  
  
_Hero: Yes._  
  
The limit on the number of beers English could consume had just been reached; in the time it had taken Al to reply, English had apparently fallen asleep, face-down on the bar.  The bartender tapped Al on the shoulder, then pointed at English and then made an “out” gesture.  It wasn’t an unfriendly order, necessarily.  Still crystal clear.  
  
Al swiveled back and laid his hand on English’s back.  Easy, slow, no need to startle him into making a scene.  “Hey.  Why don’t I give you a ride home?”  
  
English snorted and lifted his head to glare blearily at Al.  “Fuck, no.  Can’t.”  
  
Likely meaning, Al couldn’t see where he lived.  Al _pffft_ ed out a disgusted breath.  
  
“Ohhhkayyy.  Fine.  I’ll take you to my place, because I don’t care if you see where I live.  And I have a couch you can crash on.”  Not like Al would be there more than a couple months, anyway: Gamma moved them around pretty frequently.   
  
“’M a big lad.  I can take care of myself.  Always have.”  
  
“Izzat so?  Well, I think it’s best if we hang together for now, and we can’t do that here.  It’d.  Uh.  It’d make me feel better,” Al said.  
  
“It would?”  Even blasted and numb, English looked pleased.  His eyes widened, and did one corner of one lip curl up, there?  Al’s heart constricted with a little twinge under his ribs.   
  
“Yeah.  Ha ha.  Unless you hate being around me that much?”  
  
“No,” English mumbled, with a strange look.  A guilty look, maybe?  Weird.  
  
With Al’s help, English oozed off his bar stool into a more-or-less upright position.  Al dug his wallet out of his pocket, only to discover that he hadn’t grabbed any cash.  _Shit._  
  
“Idiot.  Y’are darling, y’know that?” English said with a bleary smile.  Al felt his face warm.  It warmed more when it became apparent that English needed help digging his own wallet out of his tight jeans.  Al  had to do it for him, knowing he was turning bright red at shoving his fingers onto English’s ass, but eventually he managed to get them paid for and legit.   
  
The heat on his face reached imminent meltdown levels when English wrapped an arm around his waist for support as they walked out the door.  His whole body caught fire when English mumbled, “’S nice to touch someone, now and then.  Feel human, y’know?”  
  
“What, you’re not a robot?” Al joked, pure defensive reflex.  
  
“No.  Mmm. Like to touch you more… I could kiss you again.”  
  
The top of Al’s head exploded with _yayyy_.  His mouth still managed to say, “That’d probably not be a good idea.  Ha ha.”  
  
Was that hurtful?  Was English The Celibate admitting things while vulnerably drunk that he was secretly feeling, and Al wasn’t handling this correctly, or–  
  
No, English was passed out again.  Al sighed and poured him into the car – his old civvie Honda – and got the door shut.  
  
With trembling fingers that jingled his keys, he got into the driver’s seat and fumbled the ignition.  Getting shot at by criminals – that was same old, same old.  This, though, was new territory.  Anything could happen.  English could say, do anything, and Al would have to fight with himself and his own feelings and suffer guilt over it, no matter what it English said or did, oh God, oh shit.  
  
He was given some minutes to calm down, at least; English merely slept on the ride.  He didn’t snore, but he did drool on Al’s passenger window.  
  
Al hated seeing him so exposed, even as his heart thumped with the … thrill? Tension? Of wondering what English would say next.  Maybe he’d tell Al his name?  
  
Aaannnd there was the guilt, yup, right on time.  Al wondered again why he had it so bad.  In the service he’d used to be around tons of dudes all the time – built dudes – and had managed not to get all gooey over any of them.  But gooey he was.   
  
Why was a mystery, but he knew when he’d fallen: the exact moment, the exact shared speaking look, that had shifted his feelings from “he’s hot, oh shit” to something a little more … crush-like. A Saturday night in August, a public meet-and-greet, i.e., waiting in a neutral location for a prearranged contact, about what else? Drugs and money laundering.  Two guys hanging out, drinking (virgin) margaritas by the river.  
  
It had been a gorgeous night, with low humidity and just enough breeze.  Al had unashamedly been enjoying it, relaxing under the colored lights amid the greenery, watching the tourists and couples and wedding parties trickle by their table in a steady, laughing stream.  Like a real date.  
  
A guy in an un-weatherly black hoodie had jumped the fence by their table and taken the empty seat.  Both Al and English tensed; they were expecting an older dude.  
  
“How can we help you?” English said, leaning back, outwardly cool as their lime slushies even as he fingered a hot weapon under his shirt.  
  
The guy grinned at them, then stuck a finger in Al’s drink.  He sucked the slushie off his finger and grimaced.  
  
“Dios mio!  Yeah, you’re the right guys.  Took me long enough.  Here.”  
  
He dropped a piece of folded paper on the table.  In a flash he popped out of his chair, leapt the fence back out onto the crowded sidewalk, and disappeared into the crowds and shadows.   
  
Al grabbed the paper and unfolded it.  English winced and palmed his face with the hand he’d held out in caution.  “We should have followed, and instead you’ve--”  
  
“Holy shit, man, lookit this!” Al interrupted, passing over the note.  It was handwritten in block letters:  
  
_VAN HAPT LOS PALMAS 216. 1015 THEY BE GONE. TELL THEM TONY WANTS NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT SHIT._  
  
“Las Palmas is right there!” Al continued in a low voice, nodding across the river at the hotel balconies facing them.  _Van Haupt_ was a kidnapping, and wasn’t a Gamma case.  
  
English opened his mouth to likely voice some obvious warning or question, _who, what, how, is it a trap_.  Then he looked at Al’s pleading face – _can we can we that’s like fifteen minutes from now I wanna help please_ – and he’d smiled, with teeth, and nodded.  And Al had fallen in … something.  English _got_ him.  
  
They’d caught hell for that stunt.  But the FBI agent had been super grateful to have her husband back so quickly.  Through channels, she’d sent them some very fancy Belgian chocolates.   
  
Al still had some.  Those, and the feelings associated with them.  In his apartment.  Where he and English currently were.  It was further necessary and unnecessarily exciting to have to half-carry English, with an arm around his ribs, up the stairs.   
  
English revived some inside the closed door.  He sniffed.   
  
“Cleaner than I expected. Smells like you,” he said, looking around.  
  
And there he went again, saying interesting things in a vulnerable state.  “Huh.  Is that good?”  
  
“Hmmm,” English said.  He stumbled and Al reached out to grab him.  English used the opportunity to lock his arms around Al’s shoulders and shove their faces close. “Gotcha.”  
  
And English gave him the threatened kiss.  With an open mouth.  And Al, like an idiot, kissed him back.  He was unable to do otherwise, he would tell himself later.  
  
But there it was, English’s tongue in his mouth, all slick and salty and beery.  English would regret this later and Al was taking advantage and – his whole body twinged hot at the sloppy, slurpy passion of English’s mouth.  Even blasted with booze he was a good kisser.  Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how one looked at it, Al liked his kisses sloppy and slurpy.  Or maybe he just liked the kisser.  
  
Heat radiated through his chest, his limbs, his fingers on English’s shoulders, where their knees knocked together as English pressed close, closer.  And then sank back into his belly, and lower.  His glasses even fogged up.  Whoa, he had it bad, didn’t he?  
  
It was just, English was emitting all these sexy, deep, _mmm_ -smacking noises as they made out.  And he smelled like lime.  For Al, arousal was inevitable, having what he’d wanted for, like, ever.  Inevitable, and bad.  
  
“Hey—hey—mmph,” he tried to say, but English had a death-grip on his head.  Al had to peel fingers out of his hair to break the kiss.   
  
“Whass wrong?  Y’ like it, don’t ye?” English murmured, his accent strong and his lime-and-beer breath hot on Al’s lips.  Goddamn, he had long eyelashes.  
  
“Yeah, but—No!  Man, you’re smashed and I don’t wanna…”  
  
“Don’ wanna what?” English breathed, punctuating the question with an ass-grab that was shockingly on-point.   
  
“Take…” Well, Al couldn’t say _take advantage_ , because he was the one being mauled by hot secret agent, after all.  He shivered all over. “Let you do something you’re gonna hate me for in the morning.”  
  
“Won’ hate you.  Keep ye alive, don’t I?” English said, opening his eyes.  Goddamn, they were green, and focused on Al’s mouth.  No artifice, no faces Al would want to practice in the mirror: just naked desire.  It began to dawn on Al that maybe his crush wasn’t so one-sided.  Or maybe English was just blitzed and lonely and letting his … affection, or whatever, free rein.  Either way, there was no good outcome.  
  
“Thanks for that, man, but – why don’t you sleep off the drunk, and then we’ll talk.”  
  
“Smart, I s’pose.”  English’s gaze remained fixed on Al’s mouth.  “It’s a hard life, yer learnin’.  Give us one more kiss, and then I’ll do as ye ask.”  
  
Al was putty.  Al was pathetic.  “Okay.  Then you sleep,” he agreed.     
  
He closed his eyes and pursed his lips.  Were they even allowed to do this?  It wasn’t in the unwritten rules, that was for sure.  
  
English merely chuckled.  Al felt something soft run over his cheeks, then English’s last, gentle kiss, the slip of his tongue just around the inside of Al’s closed lips.  Al’s knees nearly buckled at the—yeah, the affection, and the promise, in the gesture.  Then English pulled away.   
  
“G’night,” he said, and simply tumbled over onto the couch.  Soon he was snoring, and Al was left half-hard and wondering how they would face each other in the morning.  He laid a blanket over English and went to bed.  He did not sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a hot mess, because I'm so "???" with secret agents. I also reworked it and added a scene that didn't need to be there. But dangit, I'm having fun anyway. Hope it's fun to read. :D :D :D


	4. Kiss Four, Plus Some More

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More inept criminals get shot! More sexual and emotional fail!

NOVEMBER  
  
Oh, shit was bad, all right.  They were gonna die.  
  
At the moment they were still alive and whole, him and English, if a little banged up.  Their arms were tied behind their backs, their legs wrapped with cord, and they were locked in a bare basement room with no windows, but with armed guards outside the door.   
  
They had to assume that, anyway.  At least they weren’t gagged.  
  
“Well, if they were gonna kill us, they could’ve just shot us,” Al suggested.  The criminals had taken their weapons, wallets with fake IDs and, weirdly, his glasses.  His spares and some cash were stashed in a pocket in his underwear – he’d learned to carry those – but he couldn’t reach them.  
  
“Likely we’ll be tortured for information and then killed.  Shit,” English ground out.  He was struggling with the ties behind his back.  “Here.  Let me try yours.”  
  
Al scooted his butt along the concrete floor until they were back-to-back.  He felt English’s jumbled-together fingers futzing around with the knots at his wrists.   
  
“We couldn’t go anywhere, even if we were untied,” Al pointed out.  
  
“Who’d think you’d turn defeatist so quickly?  There are always options.”  
  
“I’m not being defeatist, just honest.”  English’s fingertips tickled Al’s palms, but he fought not to twitch, to let English do his job.  He’d gotten them out of all sorts of shit, after all.  
  
“Well, I’m not going out by dying here, by God.”  
  
Al’s stomach dropped.  “I didn’t know you were going out?”  
  
“Tch.  Surely you understand the nature of the job by now,” English said.  
  
Yeah, the crash and burnout.  English hadn’t quite crashed yet, at least if his whole getting smashed and macking on Al thing last month hadn’t been it.  But he was riding a fast train on a short trip.  Al hated knowing their time together was limited.  
  
Though he’d rather have English whole and happy than guilt him into staying.  Even if he always seemed to recover: Al had gotten up the morning after the blitzed macking incident – after no sleep – and had been faced with a wide-awake and coherent English rearranging the pillows on his couch.  
  
He’d looked at Al straight on, crossed his arms, and said, “I apologize for my behavior.”  
  
“No problem,” Al had said.  What else could have been said?  
  
And that had been that.  Al still wondered if English remembered the electricity between them, sparking at their lips, arcing between their bodies.  Maybe: sometimes he caught English looking at him, green gaze focused somewhere between Al’s nose and chin.   
  
Or maybe it was just Al.  He sure remembered, anyway.  Remembered every time he took a shower, and every time he got into bed alone.  Which meant he remembered sometimes more than once a day.  Could English feel the jerking-off calluses on his fingers?  
  
Al could feel his wrists slipping further apart.  It was working!  Damn, English was good.  His deft fingers were good.  Nice fingers.  
  
“Stop fidgeting,” English bitched.  
  
“No, I can feel the rope loosening!  Wait—let me jiggle myself out from here.”  
  
“Ouch! My fingers were still tangled in the rope.  There.”  
  
Al wasn’t deft, but he was strong.  Helped along by the deft finger-work, he snapped the knot apart and wriggled his hands free.  
  
“Good!  Hurry!  Hurry on mine,” English said.  
  
“Got it.” Even sans glasses Al could undo a knot while kneeling and facing it.  Gosh, English’s hair smelled good.  Sweaty.  Shampoo-y.  Manly.  Al forced himself to focus, and soon English slipped his hands free of the rope.  
  
They’d just crawled awkwardly upright onto their mummy-wrapped legs when the door crashed open.  A slender guy in a black Italian suit stood in the doorway.  Pointing a twelve-gauge at them.  
  
“Ehi!  We can see you on camera, you know,” the guy said in accented English.  
  
“Can you see this?”  And damned if English didn’t just swivel and throw himself at the guy, punching him in the face, even with his legs bound and double barrels practically shoved up his nose.  
  
The guy went down.  Al leapt and threw himself into the fight, fish-flopping around until he’d wrestled the rifle into his own possession.  
  
“You’re gobba ged it,” the guy threatened from under a bloody nose.  English elbowed him in the head, knocking him out, then patted him down until he found a tidy little pistol holstered to the guy’s side.  He also found a set of keys, which he tucked into his pocket.  Al thought he might actually be in love.  
  
“There will be more guards,” English warned as they untied their legs.  
  
There was at least one more right away, running at them down the hallway as they made the door.  Al was out first: he hoisted the rifle and took a shot, and the hallway shook with a thunderous roar.  Even though he’d aimed wide, the guy ducked the wrong way and was blown to messy bits in the narrow hall.  
  
“Goddamn.  Who even brings a twelve-gauge to a hostage situation?  Ha ha,” Al said.  He thought his laugh might have sounded kind of crazy.  
  
“Someone who wants to hear us shooting?”  English suggested.  He peered at Al’s face for a narrow-eyed moment. “I’ll handle the next.”  
  
“If they keep coming one by one,” Al said.  
  
The next came in a pair, but English took them down with surgical accuracy, the standing one in the kneecap, the kneeling one right between the eyes, one after the other, _thunk-crack_ - _scream_ , _thunk-crack_.  
  
They had to shoot one more guard on the way to the parking lot.  There was going to be a body-count to explain.  Al felt kind of sick.  He didn’t like straight-up killing people, and while he couldn’t be completely sure, he thought English didn’t really care for it, either.  But in a hostile situation with no phones, no watches and no backup coming, when the criminals already knew they were there and had caught them once, they didn’t have much choice but to trade force for their lives and the information they possessed.  Gamma Task didn’t negotiate for prisoners.  
  
There were a jumble of cars parked out front.  English toggled the lock button on the key fob he’d confiscated until they heard and located a tooting horn, and then they ducked and darted through the cars to the live one.  
  
English got into the driver’s seat.  Al wasted several crucial and futile seconds trying to wrangle the rifle into the car with him, then realized it was useless anyway without more shot.   _Stupid._  So he dropped it onto the blacktop and English screeched them the hell out of there.  
  
Al disabled the car’s GPS so they couldn’t be tracked, while English sped away, swerving and turning to drop any pursuit.  
  
“Wh-why is it that everyone comes to Texas to deal in arms?  I mean, we like our guns as much as anyone else …  But all the w-way from Italy?” Al murmured as he worked on the floor, hoping the tremor in his voice wasn’t noticeable.   
  
“The Corpus Christi mafia.  What a joke.  So.  If the ocean is there–” English pointed right, over Al’s head.  He patted it gently on the way; so he’d noticed something. “We need to head northwest–” he pointed left – “to find our car.”  
  
“Sounds good.  Hey, here’s a phone,” Al said, glad to be of further use.  He produced an old-style flip-phone he’d found in the glove box.  Sometimes criminals picked up tracphones and loaded them with minutes; they couldn’t be tracked the same way smartphones could.  “It’s charged!”  
  
“Call Ops.  Then yank the sim.  Ditch it if we’re caught,” English ordered.  
  
Ops told them to get their car and hole up in the country for the night.  Their stolen watches would be disabled.  They’d have to  check in every other hour for further instructions.  Since there had been the body count, the regulars would likely want witnesses.  
  
Once in their own vehicle, they hauled ass northwest to Blue Berry Hill and then headed east towards Victoria.  The whole way, English kept an eye on the rear-view mirrors and Al looked over his shoulder at least once a minute, looking for a tail, eyeballing every car that got behind them.  A Wal-Mart in Edna provided incognito parking, and they walked until they found a motel that would take cash.  Al got the room and fetched English from his cover behind a stairwell.  
  
Al’s fingers were so fumbly, he couldn’t even slip the key card into the door.  Without a word, English took the card from him and opened the door, then nudged Al inside.  
  
The room was a dump but they were safe, and it was quiet, and there was no road ahead and no headlights to look out for behind.  Yet the adrenaline was still pumping.  Al couldn’t sit.  He couldn’t stand, not without pacing.  He tried to turn on the TV but grabbed the wrong remote and then knocked the right one behind the bed.  He was starting to get down on his knees to dig for it when English grabbed his wrist and held it tight, steady.  
  
“You did well,” English said in a quiet voice.  
  
“Yeah?  Ha ha!” Al said, feeling a little maniacal.  “So you can feel okay about leaving me!”  
  
English sighed.  “Don’t be an idiot.  Go take a shower.  Go!”  
  
“You’re the boss,” Al snipped.  
  
“No, I’m not.  I’m your partner,” English said.  His cheeks looked flushed, even in the dim room.  “And as your partner, I will tell you that you’re wound up and shocky.  Furthermore, you are filthy. Wash this.”  
  
He fingered a sore spot on Al’s forehead—he’d been knocked in the noggin when they’d been taken captive.  Al took a deep breath.  Calm did not come.   
  
“Okay,” he said anyway, and headed into the tiny bathroom.  
  
He shed and dropped his nice suit and shirt and underwear and socks into a pile on the bathroom floor.  Once he got the shower water hot, he just stood under the spray, not bothering to soap, letting the hot water and steam soak into his face and shoulders.  Five minutes of that helped, and another five made it even better.  It became possible to breathe without hitching or hyperventilating, at least.  
  
This sort of mood wasn’t exactly unfamiliar: active combat did strange things to people, things that were sometimes awful and sometimes good.  But this stuff … this was home, right?  Like an alternate, bizarre universe sitting in one’s own backyard, where people lived lives with no names and connections were fleeting.  
  
Except for English.  Who was driving to Burnout City and yet still found time to take care of Al.  No, that wasn’t exactly true: they took care of each other.  That’s what buds did.  
  
Buds—yeah, right.  Al wondered if he could crank out a _menage á moi_ without being caught or before the hot water ran cold.   
  
Suddenly the door to the bathroom creaked open.  Al jumped.  
  
“It’s just me,” English called over the noise of the shower.  “I’m washing my hands. I called Ops.  All is quiet for now.”  
  
Al’s heart rate slowed, but he poked his head around the shower curtain to check things out anyway.  English was standing over the sink in nothing but his shirt, boxers, and socks, splashing his face.   
  
God, he was – Al didn’t even think.  He reached out and grabbed English’s arm and dragged him half into the shower.  
  
“This is my only shirt,” English spluttered.  
  
“There’s a blow dryer,” Al said, and shut him up preemptively by kissing the hell out of him.  Standing in the shower like a dork, probably screwing up big-time, getting English’s clothes wet and his own, too, where they were heaped on the floor that was getting wet and – English was kissing him back, too, hard and gasping and with his hands all wound up in Al’s wet hair.  
  
For weeks Al had wondered how English really felt.  When sober.  Now it seemed he had an answer.  
  
Giddy with realization and the taste of English’s mouth, Al tried to pull him further into the shower, but English had the tactical advantage of not standing on wet tub, and he dragged Al out instead.  They stood on the pile of Al’s dampening clothes and spent a good while trying to suck each other’s breath out with their tongues.  Al shivered at English’s hands on his nude body, devouring his skin, rubbing down his arms, up his sides, along his thighs.  
  
“Wow!”  Al jumped back when strong fingers dug into his bare ass.  
  
“Turn off the water.  Let’s fuck,” English said against his lips.  
  
“You’re the – the partner.  Ha ha,” Al laughed, shakily.  _Yayyayyay! Were they even allowed to do that was he taking advantage aw hell who cared wait a minute._  
  
“I thought you were supposed to be ‘celibate.’  Asexual or something,” Al said.  
  
English rolled his eyes.  So close, so green.  “No.  I’m an, er, opportunist.  Everybody just prevaricates on their applications.  Except you.”  
  
“Except me.”  Not that Al wouldn’t have been outed, anyway.  What with the crush and the erection and all.  “So you’re bisexual?”  
  
“If you like.”  
  
Good enough for Al.  He turned off the water.  
  
Teamwork was key: English dragged him out into the shabby room proper.  Al pulled English down onto one of the small beds and Al kissed him or he kissed Al or something, it didn’t really matter, because the end result was the desired mouth and skin contact, side-to-side, grabby.  English clung to him like a wet, sticky, breath-stealing monster, and Al trapped him there by tangle-locking their bare legs together.  
  
“Wound up” hadn’t even touched the heart of the matter.  Al writhed closer, harder, greedy for everything at once, like trying to knock the dregs of shock and self-pity into oblivion with the sharp bones of English’s hip against his cock.  Eagerness was delivered in kind: English held his mouth open with a thumb rammed into the crook of his jaw, _all the better to kiss you more deeply, m’dear_ , and groped Al with his other hand _what did he have, five hands?_ like he couldn’t touch him enough as quickly as he needed to.   
  
Al was naked, open, easy.  They’d been undressed around each other before, briefly, but that had been work stuff.  Normal stuff.  This was erotic, every inch of Al’s skin aware the he was being caressed with admiration.  Everywhere.  In the crack of his ass, even, _hell,_ he was moaning like a moron.   
  
Maybe he was also too bruising with his energetic dry-humping?  Whatever; he felt English’s fingers dig between them, wrap around his cock, squeezing, pulling, and he lurched his hips into the tight grip.   
  
“You are so—so–”  
  
“No, you are–”  
  
“You punched that guy,” Al gasped as the ache of impending release spiked, deep.  
  
“I did,” English gasped back.  “God, you are darling.”  
  
He fastened his hot mouth on the corner of Al’s jaw and Al came, hard and quick, one of those brutal, unexpected orgasms out of not exactly nowhere.    
  
“Oh God–  Oh damn,” Al lamented, as he shot his load onto English’s fingers.  
  
“Damn—is—right,” English muttered.  He didn’t seem far behind, had jammed his nose into Al’s throat and was jerking himself, panting in that sexy, breathless way.  Al worked his wobbly fingers in there to help. You did that for the one you loved, after all.  
  
“Yes,” English moaned, and wrestled Al onto his back.  He rode Al’s thighs in his boxers, Al’s hand smashed up against his erection through the wet material.  After not very long his eyes screwed shut and he gasped out his own climax.  
  
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he moaned in a broken voice, riding out the waves of release, coming all messy on his clothes and Al and Al’s fingers and his own jizz and damn, he looked hot as he came, all mussed and slack-jawed.  
  
“Fuck,” he said again, and slumped forward, hands on either side of Al’s head.   
  
Al took a moment or two to recover, then pointed out, “Looks like we ain’t gonna.”  
  
“Wh-what do you think that was?” English said, his breath catching.  
  
“Uh—I know that!  I’m not a virgin or anything.”  
  
“Well, neither am I, though you wouldn’t know it, would you?” English said, and he actually grinned.  
  
Al’s chest squeezed at the unfamiliar expression, which was fucking cute, was what it was.  Especially so close.  “Guess it’s been a while?”  
  
“An understatement,” English said, punctuating his agreement with a kiss to Al’s nose.  He glanced up and away, then back, still grinning.  “We have exactly an hour and thirty-eight minutes to do better.”  
  
Until they had to call Ops again, he meant.  The hot promise in his low voice melted Al right into the sheets.  “Hero” was lucky, all right.  All that time he’d spent dreaming of getting naked in the not-for-work way with English, of being this close...   
  
But that reminded him of another question.  One that could complicate things.  “So.  Uh.”  
  
“Mmmm?”  
  
It was hard to think straight, what with English nibbling his earlobe that way.  “Uh.  Are we allowed to?”  
  
English stopped what he was doing, dang, and his voice in Al’s ear returned to its more normal, snarkily British level.  “Are we allowed to what?”  
  
_Live together forever?_ Al sighed.  “Fuck.”  
  
“Nnnng,” English groaned.  He rolled off Al and flopped to the side, throwing a forearm over his face to cover his eyes.  
  
“It’s a good question,” Al pointed out.  
  
“Yes.”  English peeled the arm back a little to peer at Al from under his elbow. “Erm.  It’s not exactly encouraged.  Thus the, er, hedging on our applications.  It’s not like we have much opportunity for intimacy. In our line of work.”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  Opportunists without opportunity?  Al wondered if English knew how ridiculous he looked, trying to be all teacher-mode-y with jizz all over his half-dressed body.  Maybe so, because the arm flopped back over his eyes.  
  
“There’s no rule.  Per se.”  
  
“I noticed that,” Al said.  As long as they were in Gamma’s service, agents’ lives and relationships – intimacies of all kinds – were confined to each other, on the partner level.  Which brought up another question, one that shouldn’t be asked.  About English and Frog, maybe?  But that was probably just jealousy poking its tiny little head out.  
  
“And no, not all partners fuck,” English added.  
  
Al laughed even as he felt himself flush.  More.  “Goddamn, you’re good.  I’m lucky, and you’re good.”  
  
English sat up.  He was frowning, his eyebrows all down-pointy.  “No, you’re not lucky.  You have me.  You are wide open.  Every thought you have, if not spoken aloud, is written all over your face.  Frankly, you’re difficult to work with.”  
  
Al’s face heated further, both at being caught out and with being insulted.  “I’m difficult?  Try working with yourself, dude.”  
  
The bushy eyebrows tightened further.  “As I’ve pointed out before, I keep us alive.  I’m a professional.”  
  
Al snorted.  “A professional pain in my ass.”  
  
“No, that would’ve been if we’d fucked.”  
  
“I thought that’s what we did?  Argh!”  Al was getting all tight behind the eyeballs.  He sat up and glared at his so-called partner.  “Here I was, all worried that I was taking advantage of you.  But you’re the one messing with me.”  
  
“I am not.”  
  
“Yeah, you are.”  Al waggled his fingers in English’s face, pointing out the sticky community come that was, that very second, drying on ‘em.  “You give me all these mixed signals.  And I d-don’t even know your name.”  
  
English opened his mouth to speak, then shut it.  Then opened it again.  “I – I–” he began, then swallowed and looked away, at nothing, at anything but Al.  “And here I thought you also just wanted a fuck.”  
  
“Oh, shit,” Al said.  His gut twisted.  Screwup number one jillion for the day: not following English’s Personal Unwritten Rule Number One.  Not Thinking.  Not Reading The Situation.  Totally getting it all wrong.  
  
English winced.  He looked like he might say something more, twist the knife deeper, maybe—and then the tracphone laying on the bedside table rang.  They both jumped.  And stared at the ringing phone.  It was Alamo Cleaning Services.  
  
“You get it,” English ordered at last.  He wrenched himself off the side of the bed and stomped over to grab his pants from the back of a chair.  
  
“Fine–”  
  
“Get it, take it from here.  Take all of it,” English mumbled.  And shut the bathroom door behind him.  
  
Al’s clothes were in there, along with his glasses.  “Yo.  Hero, five-nine-eight-three-echo here,” he snapped into the phone.  
  
The regulars wanted statements.  Yeah, Al could do it.  Yeah, he’d be ready for the pickup.  Yeah, sure, English would take the car back home, give the in-person report to Ops.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Sure!  The experience would be good for him.  
  
English received instructions and handed Al his clothes through a crack in the door.  Which was fine, because Al didn’t want to look at him, anyway.  He’d had enough of feeling stupid for one night, and had yet to face the FBI wearing a broken heart and a suit that was damp and wrinkled. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right! One chapter to go. I'm sorry to say I likely won't get it up before Sunday, since I want to make some edits but I'm hosting a holiday party at my house and the next few days will be spent cleaning and cooking and seeing The Last Jedi. But Sunday night is my target. Thanks for continuing to read!


	5. Kiss Five (and on)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So where'd English go? Not too far, I hope, because needed moar sex.

DECEMBER  
  
Elizabeta was trying to tell him something.  
  
Al popped out his earbuds – _I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name_ – and offered friendly attention.    
  
“Sorry about that!  What’s up?”  
  
Elizabeta snorted.  “What’s up with you, is more like it.  I was saying, you looked for a minute there like you were about to punch a hole through the windshield.  Or cry.  Or both.”  
  
“Oh, hah. I guess I was in my own little world.”  _For there ain’t no one for to give you no pain._ Al checked his watch.  There was no blinky.  “Are we moving out?”  
  
“Not yet.  I honestly don’t think we will.  Not tonight.”   
  
“Merry Christmas to us,” Al said, though Christmas wasn’t for a couple more days.   
  
They were on stakeout in a Burger King parking lot near downtown; for hours they’d been driving around, parking, driving around, parking, et cetera, all within a prescribed area of several blocks, waiting in case the data jockeys got a whiff of movement from the inland remnants of the Corpus Christi Mafia.  As English had called them, anyway.  
  
English, whom Al hadn’t seen hide nor hair of for over three weeks.  A month ago that exact night, as a matter of fact, through a crack in a motel room door, and obviously he’d been counting the days and that’s why he’d looked glum enough to make even Elizabeta concerned.  _The jerk_.  
  
Elizabeta _hummed_ her seat-back upright, then crossed her arms and stared at him.  “You’ve been kinda moody in general, lately, and that’s not like you.  You must still be upset about English leaving, huh?”  
  
Nail on the head, that was his sparkling new partner Elizabeta.  Al wondered how much she knew.  Or guessed.  Or how much he showed?  He hadn’t been able to discuss his personal woes with anyone because job, duh.    
  
“Yeah, I guess,” he said, carefully.    
  
She shrugged.  “We haven’t really talked about it, but I know you were close.  Hell, we’re all close.  So you knew he was messed up, right?  Because he was totally fucked up there at the end.”  
  
Al crossed his arms to match hers.  “Hey, that’s my partner—ex-partner—you’re talkin’ about there, lady,” he said, trying to keep his voice light.  English was a jerk, sure, but he’d kind of been Al’s jerk.    
  
“Ha!  Yeah, he was an amazing agent.  And I don’t have the right.  But Frog’s the one who said it, and he definitely has the right.  He said English had issues from the past, whatever that means.  He wouldn’t elaborate.  And Frog is totally heading to Fuckedsville himself.  So he should know.”  
  
Frog had been all set to retire from Gamma with five years under his belt, but had agreed to stay on six more months to train one more newbie agent.  While English had just … disappeared.  From Al’s life, anyway.  With no word, no explanation, no nothin’.  Whatever specifics Ops knew, they weren’t telling.  
  
They’d just told him that English had retired from Gamma, and that Sword would be his new partner.  As friends from before in the service, they’d been deemed “likely to work well together.”  Despite the fact that he knew her name.  Also despite, or maybe because of, the fact that they were total personality opposites.  
  
As Al and English had kind of been.  Except they’d sorta been alike, too.  Al really missed him.  
  
The issues from the past sounded intriguing.  Unfortunately, that was something else he’d likely never know, so there wasn’t any point in pressing the issue.  “Frog’ll be okay. He’s smooth,” Al offered instead.  
  
“Yeah.  A real smoothie.”  Elizabeta wore a fond-looking smile.  She held up her Seven-Eleven foam cup.  “Good at training.  Look at me!  I can sit up all night drinking shitty coffee with the best of ‘em.”  
  
Al gave her a dutiful _blech_ face.  English had always kept a Yeti full of hot tea.  
  
Outside, dawn was swelling on the horizon, visibly brightening the world even through their car’s tinted windows.  It was gonna be a clear and crisp morning: they were having a surprise Christmas cold snap.  Maybe it would snow?  Al checked his watch again.  Five-forty-seven.  
  
“They’ll be making Croissanwiches soon.  Mmmm,” he said.  
  
“Yuck.  You can have mine.  I have some nice yogurt and homemade granola waiting at home.”  
  
They’d be off in a couple of hours.  And then Al could go back to his latest impersonal apartment.  Alone.  
  
“Gotta tell you, E.  I’m not sure I’ll last as long as our pardners did.”  
  
She snorted again.  “Word.  You’re too sincere.  I don’t think I, or even English, have enough hard edges to offset you.”  
  
“Don’t tell anyone I said that,” Al added belatedly.  
  
“I don’t have to.”  She fussed with her ponytail and gave him a considering once-over.  “I mean, don’t get me wrong.  I like having you around, and I trust you.  But it’s not about what I want.  And you’d make a good FBI or ATF agent, though.”  
  
_It’s not about what I want._   That was refreshing to hear.  “You think so?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Thanks, babe.”  
  
 “Don’t call me babe, you ass.”  She punched his arm, then settled back and returned to playing Candy Crush on her phone.    
  
Al replaced his earbuds and went back to his music, the music that reminded him of his mom, and of English, if that wasn’t awkward.  And he dreamed of breakfast, because he couldn’t bear to think of never seeing English again.  
  
A couple hours and Croissanwiches later, Al let himself into his place.  Where the alarm was already turned off.  Not good.  
  
He drew his side-piece from under his jacket and a mini-strobe flashlight from his pocket.  He clicked on the light to hide behind the blinding strobe and nudged open the door.    
  
“Jesus!  Turn that thing off.  It’s just me,” said English’s voice from inside Al’s apartment.  
  
It was possible to feel several powerful emotions at once, and Al knew, because he cycled through ‘em all in the space of half a second: startlement, exhilaration, anguish, anger, joy.    
  
“Just you, huh?  That’s surprising enough,” he said, feeling a mite proud of his composure despite the crazy, anguished flutter of his insides.  He clicked off the strobe and opened the door the rest of the way.    
  
English was standing in the middle of the living room floor, next to a half-unpacked box.  He was actually, literally, twiddling his thumbs.  Like he’d almost been caught going through Al’s things.   
  
Al’s glasses had fogged up.  He wiped them off and nodded at the box.  “It’s just holiday decorations I’ve never gotten rid of and haven’t had any time to put up.”  
  
“What?  Oh, indeed.  Festive.”  English was wearing a blush, along with his nice grey shirt and a pair of ratty jeans that clung prettily to his ass.  A jacket that was not Al’s was draped on the elliptical.  “I, er, let myself in by–”  
  
“You don’t have to tell me that, dude.  I’ve seen you disable enough alarms.”  Al was more interested in knowing why English was there than how.  He didn’t look drunk.  He looked … normal.  Welcome.  
  
English flushed more deeply.  “Yes, well.  I apologize regardless, for barging in …”  
  
He trailed off.  _I apologize for my behavior.  No problem!_     
  
Al sighed.  Was he gonna have to ask straight out?  No, he refused to.  He was the one owed an explanation, after all.  
  
He breezed in, his most casual and artless, and tossed his jacket onto the elliptical next to English’s.  It was chilly inside; he hadn’t ever turned the furnace on.  “You want coffee?  A soda?  Beer?”  
  
“No thank you.”  English produced his battered Yeti.  He set it back on the coffee table.  He _ahemm_ ed.  “So.  You look well.”  
  
“I look the same as when you last saw me, a month ago.”  
  
English spluttered and threw up his hands.  “Well, maybe you always look good to me.  I’m trying … “  
  
Al felt his ears warm.  That was the exhilaration acting up, not the anger, though he tried to put some of that on by setting his hands on his hips.  “Trying to do what?”  
  
“Trying to act like a normal human being, goddammit.  I’m not in practice.”  
  
English was bright red.  Al felt the joyful warmth in his ears creep in over his own cheeks, and he laughed.    
  
“You signed that right away forever, remember?”  
  
English chuckled.  “Eeeyup,” he said.  
  
He sounded ridiculous, _yup_ ping with a British accent.  Al stepped close, to see if maybe their pair of blushing faces, together, might warm up the room a bit.    
  
“Actually,” he said, looking down into English’s green eyes, all close and Christmassy.  “Last time you saw me, I didn’t have any clothes on.”  
  
English didn’t flinch or twitch at that bait; he merely raised an eyebrow.  Yep, he still had it.  “Indeed.  You looked astonishing.”  
  
Al liked being called _astonishing_.  He leaned down and English rose up, the couple inches of height difference gone in an instant, _bam_ , and let their lips meet, _bam bam_ again.    
  
The happy reunion of their mouths was forceful and satisfying, and definitely heated up the room, what with English wrapping his octopus-arms all over Al’s shoulders and back and the top of his head.  For half a minute or more Al warmed his cold hands on ratty jeans and warmed his soul on the citrus-scent of English’s cologne.  Then English inhaled deeply, like remembering how to breathe, and pulled away only until the tips of their noses met.  
  
“So how about some reunion sex?” he whispered.  
  
“God, you’re horny,” Al laughed.  Like he wasn’t. _Yay!_ But his pride wanted a moment, even though he’d promised himself not to ask.  “Shouldn’t we talk about some stuff, first?”  
  
“Can we talk during sex?  I rather want to make love to you very much.”  
  
_Rather very much_?  Well, he was trying, he’d said.  It was good enough for Al.  He knew the difference between “make love” and “a fuck.”  
  
“Okay?”  
  
“Okay?”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
They stared at each other.  Gosh, the conversation in here was scintillating.  English improved it by nudging Al’s mouth open with his thumb, then tipping up to drag his teeth oh-so-gently over Al’s lower lip.  Al waited, breathless and patient, for English to give him what felt like a real first kiss, as he traced the circumference of Al’s mouth with his lips, slow and soft, before pulling his head down to fasten their mouths together just right.  Their tongues met, lingered.  
  
Dang, but English was a good kisser, drunk or sober.  Al’s knees wobbled.  New arousal sparked low in his belly and crept, molten, outwards and up until his ears steamed, he would swear.  And English was making those smacky, breathy noises again, goddamn.  
  
After being kissed but good, Al was a little stuttery.  
  
“I c-can’t talk when you do that,” he said.  
  
“It’s me who needs to explain, and that, I’ll manage somehow.”  English was multitasking, nuzzling Al’s jawline and yanking his shirt out of his pants while he spoke.  
  
Al took the opportunity to lay hands on English’s ass, ooh, nice and tight under his worn, soft jeans.  “Let’s start with: where’ve you been?”  
  
“Ah.  Recuperating.  Therapy.  Preparation.”    
  
“For?”  It was necessary to wriggle a bit so English could pull his shirt off.  Those fingers that undid ropes and picked locks made short work of Al’s button-down.  Al shivered at English’s quick but cool touch, brushing along his chest, the sensitive skin of his underarms.  Belatedly he tried to get his own fumble-fingers to reciprocate on English’s buttons, but English stepped back and just lifted his shirt off, bottom-up.  Ah, skin to skin.  That was nice.  Warm.  
  
“A new job.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“Ah– Liaison.”  English seemed to be having some trouble managing despite his promise.  Maybe it was the way Al was sucking on the little hollow between his throat and the bump of his shoulder?  
  
“Liaising with?” Al murmured.  _Gosh, he must use the best soap_.  He tasted all sharp and clean.  Manly.  
  
“Between regular FBI and Gamma.  Mmm.  Apparently I have a … how’d they put it?  Wealth of experience and knowledge of the ins and outs of the organization.”  
  
“Uh huh.”  Al wanted to make a sexy joke about _ins_ and _outs_ , but restrained himself.  Instead he let the sway of his hips in English’s hands speak for him.  For that, he got them yanked hard against English’s bony pelvis.  _Déjà vu_.  
  
“Except for my mistake.  I was—am—attracted to you.  And found myself apt to develop feelings for you.  Against my better judgment.”  
  
Also déjà vu.  Al pulled away and offered a suspicious raised eyebrow.  “Wow.  Y’all are quite the charmer,” he said, topping the attitude off with a little Texas-style dryness.    
  
English _hmph_ ed and tugged him back by the waistband.  “Oh, stop.  I’m trying.”  
  
“That’s okay.  You’re a jerk, but I’ve known that since the second I met you.” He’d deal – if he got English in the bargain.  They’d deal.   
  
“Telling it like it is.  It’s both your drawback and your charm.”  There went Al’s pants, to his knees.  
  
“That and my rock-hard abs.”  
  
“Not so rock-hard.  But lovely all the same,” English teased, all grabby with the goods.  He breathed hotly in Al’s ear, adding a shiver-inducing lick or two.  “This is for your ears only, by the way.  I didn’t even tell my counselor about … about us, which I should have, but I didn’t.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s – ah—not how therapy works.”  
  
“I know that.  Er, do you have a bed, by chance?  As much as I’d love to shag you on the exercise equipment …”  
  
A brief, hot daydream zapped through Al’s brain.   _Yeah?  Nah_.  “Sort of.  In there.”  
  
Thankfully the hobble to the bedroom was short – it was a small apartment – if embarrassing.  English stopped kissing and groping him long enough to cast a wry look at the mattress and box spring stacked on the floor.  
  
“You don’t have a bed.”  
  
“It’s a nomadic life, y’know.  I haven’t had time to put it together yet.”  
  
“Hm.  Not very military of you.”  English shrugged and kicked off his jeans, cool and judgy as a … judgy cucumber.  If it wasn’t for the sheeny flush spread over his cheeks and shoulders, and the visibly hard dick tenting his boxers, Al would swear it was business as usual.   
  
Maybe it was.  He wasn’t expecting the shove, when it came, and he toppled ass-first onto the mattress.  Which was made up very neatly, thankyouverymuch.  
  
“Oof!”  
  
He looked up to see English looking down at him – down and up both, long and slow.  More déjà vu: like he’d done when they first met, except this time there was no pretense. Al’s skin prickled.  
  
“I was being stupid.  I’m sorry I hurt you,” English said in a quiet voice.   
  
“It’s a decent mattress …”  
  
“No.  I meant, in general.”  
  
Having his heart and dick ache at the same time was a new experience, something else Al had better learn to accept, if he wanted this.    
  
“Me too.  Come on down here.  Jerk.”  
  
“Thank you.  I think.”  English’s grin grew slowly, and when complete was a sight to behold.  Al had to crank his head to behold it as English circled the mattress, catlike in his leanness, and then knelt and kissed Al from upside-down.  _Mmm_ , long and slow and with lots of tongue and spit.  Sorry mode: off.  Sexy mode: on.  
  
“So.  More truth,” English continued, his voice become low and deep.  “Yes, I’m bisexual.  With a preference for your absofuckinglutely giant blue eyes.  They are quite expressive.”  
  
“Too expressive, I’ll bet?”  
  
“Never.”  English licked his chin, then kissed his way down, smoothing the path with his palms over Al’s chest, his abs, taking a moment to finger his gunshot wound, which was mostly healed, if still a little ugly.  It’d leave a scar, but who cared: cold but warming fingers traced his shuddering belly, and down, yes, yes…  
  
Al jumped when he felt a tongue in his navel and a hand in his underwear.  “Ah, man–”  
  
“Hmph.  Is that a pair of glasses in your pocket?”  
  
“Yeah, and I’m happy to see ya.”  Al was trying to keep up, had been stroking English’s flesh as he passed overhead, now and then rewarded with a gasp or the flutter of muscles under his fingers when he slipped them beneath the waistband of English’s boxers.    
  
“Ah—I have lube and condoms in mine.  Help me out, would you?”  
  
“Always prepared, eh, pardner?  Ex—ex-pardner, th-that is.  Nnnnggh,” Al moaned as he felt wet lips circle the head of his dick.    
  
“Hand me the lube, please.”  
  
“Y-yeah.”  Looked like English was topping.  _Oh, good_.  Al fumbled the lube down and bit through the condom packet to get it open, fighting the urge to either rock his hips up into English’s hot mouth or just sink into the sheets.  He’d used to be good at this down-n-dirty sixty-nine action, dammit.  But it was English’s balls in his face, English’s beloved mouth on his dick, and his deft, lube-cold fingers teasing his ass.   
  
He’d just wrangled the condom out of the packet and got it halfway on when English started to suck him off for real, god, his tongue was all swirly and slick ... and Al totally wasn’t keeping up his end of this bargain.  He tried, he really did, licking what he knew was a sensitive spot right between the testicles, holding English’s squirming hip steady.  
  
But the rasp of rough tongue and soft lips on his dick worked its magic too quickly.  He moaned and sank into the blooming, swelling pulse low in his belly, felt his knees slip apart as strong, nimble fingers wrenched his thigh still and pressed inside him, hard and deep, _hell, how many hands did the man have?_   One sharp jab in the exact right spot sent the ache rocketing close to the edge of what he could bear.  
  
“Ah—ah—geeze, wait, I’m gonna come–“ he warned.  
  
English slipped his mouth off Al’s dick with a wet, smacky sound, leaving Al gasping and with a keening ache in his balls.  
  
“Can’t have that,” English murmured.  He was trying to sound cool, but was betrayed by breathlessness. “I—ah—am fine.  I had a lovely wank in the wee hours of the morning.”  
  
“While I was working.”  Al fought to catch his own breath.  “So did you think of me?”  
  
“Yes.  I thought–” and his voice went all high and prissy—“Oh, I do hope he forgives me, because I’d sure like to fuck him silly…”  
  
“You– are—such—an.  Asshole,” Al laugh-gasped.  He was gonna get some of his own back, _I’ll show you a wank_ , and nabbed English’s cock to rub that condom on come hell or high water, but English slipped out of his grip and spider-crawled around to shove his dick-tasting tongue in Al’s mouth.  Al’s ass got the vigorous, stretching finger again.   
  
Al was putty, Al was pathetic, grunting so loudly at that; he wriggled his hips to push against the deep intrusion, and hiked his thigh up along English’s side, where it was grabbed and held secure.    
  
English eased off his fierce kiss to give Al’s chin a quick peck.  “So you say it’s been a while?”  
  
“Oh, hell yeah.  Too long,” Al rasped.  
  
“Mmm.  Same here.”    
  
Teamwork again won the day: English rocked back, and Al shifted forward, releasing all the air in his lungs in one long breath, felt the slim finger give way to the width of English’s cock, felt himself stretching at the short bursts of hip-action that filled him, and brought them as close as could be.  
  
There was a pause as they accustomed their bodies to being joined so intimately; English gave him another kiss on the chin. “You good?”  
  
“I’m good.”  
  
“You’re perfect,” English said in a shaky voice, and rocked forward on an exhale, back on an inhale, again and again, inhale, exhale.  Al sorta knew what he meant, wouldn’t let it go to his head … yeah, he would.  He totally let it swell his head, clench his heart, as he rode the growing burn and basked in English’s intense gaze.    
  
“Keep going – ah—tell me more about me.”  
  
“Ah—hah!”  English laughed.  “You make the most odd b-but endearingly erotic noises.”  
  
“Here I was just thinking that was you ...”  
  
English’s hips picked up their rhythm and Al fought for a few moments to catch up—ah, there, if he dug his heel into the twisted sheets and arched his back, oh god, there was that spot … Yeah, Al was making noises, sharp cries, _unh, unh, unh_ , knocked right out of him by the unremitting prod of a hard cock.  
  
English fastened his mouth on Al’s jutting, exposed throat and breathed hot on it.  “This is quickly becoming my favorite of all our dates ...”  
  
Al agreed; he felt his agreement all the way down in his toes.  “Better than knitting?”  
  
“Much better.  Better living.  Than dying.”    
  
That time, weirdly, Al knew exactly what he meant.  Like their lives, quiet and tense, punctuated by acute moments of danger and urgent action he’d never expected from a civilian existence.  English fucked him like he fought, like he drank, with desperate intensity.    
  
The pulsing throb of pleasure in Al’s belly ratcheted tighter with every quick thrust, as his dick rasped along English’s taut stomach and his prostate got banged all to hell, and he sank into the sheets amid the smell of sweat and sex and the sounds of English’s hitched breathing and the slap of skin on skin.  
  
_Fuck, I’m gonna come_ , he wanted to say, but all that came out was “Unh—fu—unh—unh!”  
  
“My name.  Is Arthur.  By the—ah—way,” English huffed into his throat.  
  
That was one ratchet-click too high.  “Arthur—ah!” Al gasped as he came, sharp spasms of release that seized his thighs and jerked his heel on the sheet.  
  
English—Arthur— felt it, the shudder of Al’s body around him.  His hips went all jerky as he lost rhythm.  “Hah.  I didn’t mean for my name to be so—so sexy.”    
  
“It’s just so damned you,” Al coughed, trying to breathe.  It was hard, what with getting all tight in the chest and behind the eyes again.    
  
“Ah—it should be.”  
  
“Yeah.”  Al arched his back to keep their bodies connected.  “Keep going — come on—”  
  
“Oh, th—thank you.”  
  
So Al was a caring kind of guy?  He dragged Arthur’s face up to meet his, and curled sore legs around his sweaty back, the better to let him prop himself om the bed and focus on finishing.  Al’s legs weren’t the only thing that was sore: climax had made his dick all sensitive and his ass got further reaming as his pardner regained his fighting rhythm.  But Al wasn’t gonna let that ruin their morning.    
  
He caressed Arthur’s flushed face, brushed sweat out of his half-lidded, Christmassy eyes, listened to him breathe hard and make noises, goddamn, how could he even say Al made funny noises.  
  
But he wouldn’t tell, like not telling about the snoring.  More trivial, secret things to stash away in his heart’s memory.  
  
Arthur was blathering, accent slipping same as when drunk.  “Thank you—I’m trying—had that wank ye know, thank you, yer perfect.”  
  
“It’s okay, man.  Come on.  Arthur,” Al told him.  He was gonna say that name a lot, now he had it, and he clung tight with his thighs and stroked Eng—Arthur’s chest, his nipples, his ass-crack.  When Al wasn’t so desperate to get off he could manage all sorts of things.  
  
It was the teasing finger dragged along the backbone to the ass-crack that did it: Arthur drooled a little, gulped it back, and managed a couple more arching, jerky thrusts before he bit his lower lip and came, breathing hard through his nose.    
  
It was cute as hell.  And Al was glad for it, for both of them.  Talk about a pain in his ass.  Good pain, though.  
  
Al peeled his ankles apart and let all four limbs flop onto the rumpled sheets, screw military preciseness, and let Eng—Arthur then flop onto him.  Neither he, nor his sheets, would be hurt by a little sweat and jizz.  
  
A couple minutes of straight-up relaxing and focused breathing brought Arthur back to life.  He propped himself on his elbows and offered Al a toothy grin.  
  
“That was heaps better than knitting, and I like to knit very much.”  
  
Al grinned back.  “I know, Arthur.  I’ve seen you do it enough. _Arthur_.”  
  
Arthur rolled his eyes, and then rolled off Al.  His arm didn’t quit flop over to cover his face, though it was a close thing.  He gave Al a sidewise look.  
  
“Honestly, I meant to tell you earlier, but what with one thing and another I never got around to it.”  
  
“Uh-huh.  Arthur,” Al said.  Maybe he shouldn’t’ve stopped asking?  It had just sort of grown into a moot point for a while there, until the instant it had again become something vitally important.   
  
He watched as Arthur rolled off the sloppy condom and tossed it into the trash can.  Al had unpacked that, at least.    
  
“I.  Er, actually have something else I haven’t told you yet.”  
  
“I have your name.  That’s pretty good for me, Arthur,” Al said.  
  
“Such a little thing, that bothered you for so long!  Part of your problem.  And mine.”  
  
“Dude, don’t start,” Al groaned.    
  
“No, really.  I’m not trying to cause trouble, I’m trying to come clean!”  Arthur re-propped himself on an elbow and fixed Al with a steady gaze.  He looked so serious that Al felt his breastbone constrict.  
  
He turned so they were face-to-face.  Friendly, or at least rapt, attention. “I’m listening.”  
  
“Right.  Well.”  Arthur closed his eyes like wincing for a moment, and took a breath before continuing.  “I did tell my counselor this, and really that was the first time I’ve ever brought it up until now, but.  So.  My first trainee was … killed, two months into our partnership, in a firefight he instigated.  In Chicago.  I wasn’t able to help him…”    
  
Al winced as the ache in his chest swelled, hard.  “Aw, man.  I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s been years.  But, well, Silver was one of mine also.”  
  
Silver, who’d gone missing two months ago and was presumed dead.  Al’s brain raced.  Elizabeta had said that Frog had said that Arthur had Issues from the Past.  Then it hit him.  Arthur, hassling him all the time about thinking first.  Arthur, frightened as shit when Al had been shot.  Arthur, freaking out about getting the hots for his partner, getting feelings for him.  Al rolled to his back and tried to breathe through lungs that suddenly felt bruised.    
  
“Geeze,” he said, wiping a hand down his face to hide the way his eyes hurt.  “Holy shit, so many things make sense now.”  
  
“About?”  
  
“About you.  The way you are.”  
  
Arthur winced.  “Yes, you just say things.  But I suppose it does me good to hear them.”  
  
“Well, I’m no therapist, that’s for sure.”  Al had seen them, of course, and knew it wasn’t a job he could ever do.  
  
“I won’t expect you to be.  Just know that I need to get my life together again.  I want to … to buy a home!  If that’s not a silly thought.  Though perhaps not so silly for one who’s been paranoidly living out of weekly-rent motels for years.  But I want to do normal, human things.  Have my own bed.  Useless decorations.  I used to, once upon a time.”  
  
“Yeah,” was all Al could say to all those revelations.  Nope, he could never be a therapist.  It hurt too much to listen, sometimes.  Or maybe it was just the talker?  Whatever it was, it must have showed, because Arthur winced.  
  
“Your face!  I’m absolute shit at telling things.  It’s been good for the job.  Bad for.  For relationships.”  
  
“That’s the nature of the job, all right.”  _Do we have a relationship?_ Al wanted to ask, but was afraid to.  So he was feeling a little fragile after all the sex and revelation, maybe.  
  
Thus he felt his heart sink as he also saw the question forming in Arthur’s eyes.  Al knew, just knew, what it would be: _Will you leave?  You should get out.  Before you become like me_.  
  
He might.  He’d thought about it.  But he wanted it to be for him and not anyone else.  And yet, yet!  You did things for the ones you loved, after all, and who wanted a life without names anyway, and—  
  
Thankfully, Arthur didn’t ask.  He smiled, another one of those toothy grins that just cracked Al’s heart into pieces and sewed it all up again in the same instant.    
  
“You’re a real good person, Al Jones,” was what he finally said.    
  
“Y’all ain’t tellin’ me nothing I don’t already know,” Al said, hardly daring to breathe.  That had been the first time he’d ever heard his name from Arthur’s lips.  Bad attempt at a Texas accent or no.  
  
“I’m a terrible person.”  
  
“That, neither.”    
  
Arthur snorted, loud and unsexy.  But still kinda sexy.  Especially coupled with that cute-ass blush.  “So glad we’ve cleared that up.  And we still have forty-six hours and eighteen minutes to get to know each other better.”  
  
Al ruffled Arthur’s hair, to borrow a comforting gesture.  “If you wanna be normal, dude, you can start by not keeping atomic time in your head,” he suggested.  
  
“You ass!  I’m trying to tell you that I’d like to continue to see you.”  
  
“So, like a date?”  
  
“A rather good idea.  One of your better ones,” Arthur said, and kissed him.  
  
Al wouldn’t even ask if they were allowed.  Who gave a shit? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fussed and fussed with that last conversation. Hope it's at least satisfying and answers some questions, and that you enjoyed a little! <3

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know a thing about secret agents and technology, so I made some stuff up for fun. Please take with a grain of salt. It's mostly an excuse to write more smut.
> 
> Despite my unresearchedness, all concrit, comments, etc., appreciated! <3 <3


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